In commercial settings, door pulls and push bars that are mounted on entrance and exit doors of commercial buildings are generally appreciated exclusively for their functional characteristics as they relate to opening doors which are generally biased to a closed position. Predominately, such doors are hinged for pivotation and are swung out of the way be a person desiring to pass therethrough. The conventional design for door pulls and push bars utilized on these door types are generally well known. In the instance of door pulls, an angled structure is usually employed having a free edge easily grasped by the user. A door pull is typically positioned on the side of a door that is pulled toward the user for opening. The location of the door pull is several feet above ground level at a location that is easily graspable by a majority of the public. Often, the door pull has a vertically measured height that is greater than its horizontally measured width.
A push bar is often positioned on the opposite side of a door to a door pull. In many instances, especially in commercial settings, entrance and exit doors are arranged to open outwardly from the building's interior. This is a safety feature that helps assure that the door will open if rushed in an emergency situation from the inside. In keeping with this feature, push bars are often incorporated into a latching mechanism that upon actuation by a push pressure upon the push bar, a door latch is disengaged thereby allowing a previously latched door to be opened by a continued push force by the user. Like the door pull, the push bar is normally located on a door at a height easily embraced by an approaching user. Contrary to the door pull's design, however, the push bar generally has a width that substantially spans the door's width and resultingly has a horizontally measured length greater than its vertically measured height.
To improve the appearance of a business establishment, door handles and push pads are sometimes ornately designed. Rarely, however, are these devices customized for a particular business by incorporating a company logo or other signage into the handle or push pad. Furthermore, those occasional prior attempts to do so have produced less than satisfactory results. Specifically, door handles having a metal exterior surface shaped to incorporate a company logo and painted to correspond to the company's color scheme are known. Not only are such door handles exceedingly expensive to manufacture, repeated use of the door handle often causes the painted exterior surface to quickly appear worn, resulting in added costs if frequently needed touch-ups are applied.
While conventional designs and orientations for door pulls and push bars have considered their positioning and configuration for facilitating engagement by the user, the visual attention that each of these two structures typically receives has been overlooked. Each time a person enters or exits a building, they, either consciously or unconsciously, make a visual fix on the door handle for engagement purposes, regardless of whether the handle takes the form of a door pull or push bar. That means, that even if just for a split second, not only is the person glancing at the door handle, but they are also concentrating on it. Given that many commercial buildings, and especially retail establishments, experience high customer traffic into and out of the building, the pull handles and push bars on the doors to the same are frequently viewed. Heretofore, the highly visible nature of these door handles has infrequently been commercially exploited, and has not been utilized for exchangeable print advertisement. Moreover, there have been no designs for such door handles that accommodate easy exchange of visual displays and permit the handle to remain installed upon the door during the exchange process.
In view of the above described deficiencies associated with known commercial designs for door handles, the present invention has been developed to alleviate these drawbacks and provide further benefits to the user. These enhancements and benefits are described in greater detail hereinbelow with respect to several alternative embodiments of the present invention.